Alterity and Occidentalism in Fourteenth- Century Icelandic Texts: Narratives of Travel, Conversion, and Dehumanization

ALTERITY AND OCCIDENTALISM IN FOURTEENTH- CENTURY ICELANDIC TEXTS: NARRATIVES OF TRAVEL, CONVERSION, AND DEHUMANIZATION ARNGRÍMUR VÍDALÍN An IcelAndIc mAnuscrIpt fragment from the turn of the fourteenth century, produced ca. 1290–1310, marks a turning point for recorded geographical knowledge in Iceland as the oldest extant treatise of its kind in Old Norse.1 It begins by stating “Sva er kallat sem þrideild se iord,” (it is said that the Earth is split into three continents), and is accompanied by a hemispherical mappa mundi as well as one of the three extant Icelandic maps of Jerusalem, including a topographical description of the city.2 Of particular interest is the manuscript’s placement of Greenland to the north of Norway, with no mention of Iceland; it goes on to explain that, should one travel to the south from Greenland, one first finds the country of Helluland and then Vínland, “er sumir menn ètla at g[an]gi af Affrika” (which some suppose stretches out of Africa).3 These are the lands on the North American coast of the northern Atlantic which were encountered by Nordic voyagers around the year 1000, as narrated in Grænlendinga saga (Saga of the Greenlanders) and Eiriks saga rauða (Saga of Erik the Red). The latter of the two sagas was written down ca. 1302–1310, around the same time as the manuscript fragment, and is preserved in the compendium Hauksbók (Book of Haukr), which similarly contains a map of Jerusalem and a description of various countries.4 Also included in the Hauksbók is a geographical treatise under the heading “her segir fra marghattudum þiodum” (here is told of manifold peoples).5 The ideas conveyed in this text are derived from the Natural History of Pliny the Elder (d. 79 CE) and the Etymologies of Bishop Isidore of Seville (560–636), both of which describe the monstrous races to be found on 1 Reykjavík, Stofnun Árna Magnússonar (AM) 736 I quarto. 2 Simek, “Scandinavian World Maps,” 537; Guðmundsdóttir, “Uppdráttur af Jórsalaborg,” 96–97. See further Kedwards, The Mappae Mundi of Medieval Iceland. A complete transcription of the mappa mundi’s text may be found in Simek, Altnordische Kosmographie, 419– 24. 3 Simek, Altnordische Kosmographie, 429–32; Alfræði íslenzk I, 8– 12. This information is entirely lacking in the mappa mundi, which does not even mention Vínland. 4 Reykjavík, AM 371 quarto; Copenhagen, Arnamagnæan Manuscript Collection 544 quarto and 675 quarto. 5 Hauksbók, 165. 86 ARNGRíMUR VídAlíN the peripheries of the world. The fragmentary geographical treatise thus strongly implies that Vínland and its peoples belong to the same periphery as West Africa. The sagas also depict Vínland and its hinterland as inhabited by Plinian Sciopodes (folk who shield themselves from the sun with a single “shade-foot”) as well as the indigenous people whom the Norse called skrælingar, a term of uncertain meaning which may refer to their skin colour or clothing. The inclusion of both mythical and actual peoples in the ethnography of the sagas speaks volumes about their authors’ learning while also revealing the development of racialized categories applied to contemporary Others.6 At the same time, the manuscript fragment’s borrowing from that same ethnographic tradition, plus its omission of Iceland from the periphery it describes, suggests an allied agenda.7 Though much of Old Norse literature springs from a long oral tradition of storytelling, it was only at the turn of the fourteenth century that classical geographic and ethnographic canons became fused together in such manuscripts, with medieval Icelanders’ extraordinary knowledge of the lands to the west of northern Europe, derived from the narratives of their unprecedented voyages to America. This local initiative, I will argue, also participated in an older European narrative tradition of “travels to the East” and the marvels to be witnessed there: the spike in the creation of these vernacular travel narratives coincides with an increase in the circulation of texts describing the Holy land and the Indies (Old Norse: Indialǫnd).8 On the one hand, this is indicative of increased interest in exotic locations and creatures: a trend evident throughout Europe in the fourteenth century. On the other hand, travel narratives are always narratives of the self, which cannot exist without the differences of the other.9 So how do these texts encode the negotiation of Icelandic identity in this pivotal era? While a tendency toward dehumanization of the Other abounds in medieval literature, in these texts it serves the specific function of bringing Iceland closer to the cultural and religious centre of Europe, by including Iceland within the boundaries of civilization and by making monsters of the peoples further west, in newfound America.10 This agenda can be observed through the Old Norse travel narratives’ contrasting perceptions of the far East and the far West. 6 See, e.g., Friedman, Monstrous Races, 8. 7 Vídalín, “From the Inside Out.” 8 Jakobsson, “On the Road to Paradise,” 936. 9 Williamsen, “Boundaries of dFORifference,” PRIV 454.ATE AND NON-COMMERCIAL 10 I have previously written on blackUSE Africans ON (blámennLY ) as subject of proto-racism in Old Norse literature: Vídalín, “demons, Muslims, Wrestling- Champions” and “The Man Who Seemed like a Troll.” I am indebted (among others) to Merkelbach and Knight, Margins, Monsters, Deviants; Jakobsson and Mayburd, Paranormal Encounters; Heng, The Invention of Race; Eliav- Feldon, Isaac, and Ziegler, The Origins of Racism; Isaac, The Invention of Racism; Smith, Less than Human; Mallon, The Construction of Human Kinds. AlTERITy ANd OCCIdENTAlISM IN ICElANdIC TExTS 87 Geographies of Alterity The ideas of identity and alterity that inform the Vínland sagas are also reflected in the Leiðarvísir (Travel Guide), an itinerary preserved in another fourteenth-century manuscript which I have named the Narfeyrarbók, because it was written in 1387 by the priest Óláfr Ormsson of Geirrøðareyri (present-day Narfeyri) in Snæfellsnes, the westernmost peninsula of Iceland.11 Previous scholars have assumed this text to have been composed between 1154–1159, under the supervision of Nikulás Bergsson, abbot of the Benedictine monastery at Munkaþverá. This misdating derives from a colophon stating that “this itinerary and information on cities is written under the direction of the abbot Nicholas, who was both wise and famous, of good memory and much wisdom, gave good counsel and spoke truthfully, and here concludes this narrative.”12 But Tommaso Marani has recently shown that much information included in the Leiðarvísir is incompatible with a twelfth- century dating and thus with abbot Nikulás’s authorship.13 There are several additional reasons to doubt Nikulás’s involvement, and even if Óláfr Ormsson was indebted to an older text, he will henceforth be considered the author of this work.14 Although the itinerarium is an ancient genre, the Leiðarvísir is unique in describing the route from Iceland to Rome and Jerusalem, and not least in its remarkable blending of Christian lore with Germanic myth. We thus encounter Gnitaheiði, the home of the dragon Fáfnir and his hoard of gold, adjacent to a hospice for pilgrims in Piacenza; the snake pit where Gunnarr Gjúkason was killed;15 and the resting places of saints.16 The Leiðarvísir also features a purportedly accurate astronomical observation which has no known parallel in any other source: “By [the river] Jordan, should one lie prostrate on a flat field and raise one’s knee, place the fist upon the knee and raise a thumb up from the fist, then a guiding star will be seen at that height in the sky and no higher.”17 However, the Leiðarvísir bears 11 Reykjavík AM 194 octavo. I am currently in the process of editing the text of this manuscript. 12 Alfræði íslenzk I, 23: “leidarvisir sea ok borga- skipan ok allr þessi frodleikr er ritinn ath fyrir-sogn Nicholas abota, er bèdi var vitr ok vidfregr, minnigr og margfrodr, rádvis ok rettordr, ok lykr þar þessi frasogn.” 13 Marani, “Leiðarvísir,” 42– 47. 14 Vídalín, “Óláfr Ormsson’s leiðarvísir.” 15 “Völsunga saga,” 81– 83. 16 lönnroth, “A Road Paved with legends.” 17 Marani, Leiðarvísir, 41: “Ut vid Iordan, ef madr liggr opinn á slettum velli ok setr kne sitt upp ok hnefa á ofan ok reisir þumal- fingr af hnefanum upp, þa er leiþarstiarna þar yfir ath sea iafn- ha en eigi hèʀa.” See Alfræði íslenzk I, 23. 88 ARNGRíMUR VídAlíN no indication of being an eyewitness account; its author did not, in all likelihood, travel this road to Jerusalem.18 What is particularly striking about the Leiðarvísir is the manuscript context in which it is preserved: buttressed between Óláfr Ormsson’s copy of the fragmentary geographical treatise (with which we began) and a description of the resting places of saints which he apparently copied from the Hauksbók. Following the latter is a catalogue of the world’s monstrous peoples not copied from any known manuscript, but clearly derived from Pliny. The Narfeyrarbók thus includes information from two older Old Norse compendia while juxtaposing Pliny’s monsters with an itinerary to Jerusalem, on the route to which mythological way markers and other paranormal phenomena are used to familiarize an Icelandic audience with exotic sites. Through this mode of viewing the Other, this text— like the earlier manuscripts of the fourteenth century— reflects a sense of self shared by the author and intended audience, articulating and challenging their underlying ideologies and cultural norms. In the words of Elizabeth Williamsen,

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